Happy Birthday to Us!
A whole year has passed. That’s almost 9000 hours of seriously hard graft and 9000 hours of living and breathing all things Pear Tree…that is, while ensuring we still meet the needs of our small humans and try our best to not allow the dreaded ‘mum guilt’ to be all consuming. We’re a little older (unfortunately), a little wiser (debatable) and a little greyer (fact…thank god for hair dye), and while we would welcome a 25th hour to the day, it’s with a huge amount of pride that we celebrate turning ‘1’.
It’s hard to believe that this time last year, we were both having night (and day) sweats about what we were about to do. Were we seriously going to leave everything that was familiar and secure and venture out on our own? Well we did, and now our third baby (Gemma) and fourth baby (Jo) – while still a baby – has taken it’s first steps and continues to grow and flourish on a daily basis. We now enter our second year with less of said ‘sweats’ and more a comforting feeling, because we’ve surrounded ourselves with like-minded people who have worked incredibly hard and in doing so, played a pivotal role in Pear Tree’s success to date.
Karley has taken the steer on a number of client partnerships, namely one where the decision maker had never used an agency and couldn’t see the relevance or indeed cost effectiveness of it in their business model. Queue, a well-timed introduction, a meeting to establish their requirements and educate that despite the general reputation that precedes us, we’re not all that bad! This was followed by some fantastic client and candidate control and she has now made several successful placements and looks set to make more in the near future. Maddie has totally immersed herself from student life into the world of work with barely a pause for breath. We literally nabbed her as an intern and while not offering anywhere near the usual graduate training schemes – this has been much more of an on-the-job, see-it-for-what-it-really-is, warts-and-all approach – she now confidently manages all of Pear Tree’s social media channels, organises us and organises events, all while doing the general admin we require just to stay afloat day-to-day. Massive quodus is due at this point because about 2 months ago, we set Maddie a target of getting us to 1000 Twitter followers by our anniversary…which she did, 2 weeks early! Even then, we were all heaping praise where praise is definitely due and she refused to even acknowledge the accolade until we had reached at least 1025, just in case anyone unfollowed us – we were all singing and dancing, where she knows just how fickle social media is! So, only a year in and this places us in the top 10 alongside our direct competitors, not to mention our 700+ Instagram followers making us the most followed recruitment agency in Bristol! Posting about everything from National Tea Day to National Pet Day and pretty much every other imaginable celebrated ‘Day’ in the calendar (obviously with some recruitment-related posts in there for good measure), our following is on the up and will hopefully continue to snowball over the next year.
We celebrated our first birthday with cake – not that we need an excuse (!) – and after the formalities of our first annual business meeting, where we reviewed Year 1 and planned Year 2, we all enjoyed a well-earned spa at Calcot Manor. Feeling positively rejuvenated, we kicked off our second year and are now looking at plans to bring in another person in the hopefully-not-too-distant future to further grow our client-base. We have invested in a shiny new interview pod in reception for interviewing candidates both in person and remotely and are planning an office refurb to accommodate our growing team. We will also be continuing to address our corporate social responsibility, and for all our sins, have signed ourselves up for Tough Mudder in May in support of Jessie May Trust. This could be interesting and no doubt tears (but hopefully no blood) will be shed! We will probably be left broken by the experience so have already decided that our next fundraising initiative will be a slightly more relaxed cake sale! We want to raise £500 and would welcome any donations to get us through – please follow this link for further information https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/peartreerecruitment!
So, it just remains to be said…or sang – ‘Happy Birthday to us, Happy Birthday to us, Happy Birthday to Pear Tree, Happy Birthday to us’!
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